Video Not Available in Your Country

by ·
Published November 8, 2012
· Updated August 2, 2016

Ever seen this message, your mate has just sent you a message something like – “you have to watch this, I lolzed so much I nearly died. Lol lol”. So you make a mental note to get some cleverer mates, then click on his link and are presented with a YouTube message like this –

It might not be that specific one, it might be the – Sorry this Video is not available in your country, or this video is not available – pretty annoying huh!

There are a variety of reasons for these messages but the vast majority of them are due to your IP address or more specifically the location of your IP address. Some are blocked automatically (like lots of BBC content outside the UK), some blocked by Youtube and some like this example specifically targeted by the person who uploaded it. So let’s take this video as an example – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYYUdDNJXaw&feature=related
the uploader appears to be from Germany

It’s likely that this video relates to some some of movie, music or TV show that is only licensed for free in Germany. So when YouTube checks our location we will be blocked (I’m in the UK at the moment). Anyway what we are going to do is use . to connect via a German video proxy server and then try and view the video again.

So when we start YouTube it will now think we are in Germany and so apply restrictions based on this country. Now we can see the video and don’t get the – Video Not Available in your Country error message. Sorry it’s so small – graphic size was huge when I uploaded, click on it to make it a bit bigger.

It’s actually a movie broadcast by the German TV company Kanal which is why it’s been uploaded with the restriction of being seen only in Germany. Remember though when you are using a German video proxy server, you may get blocked from other stuff which you can normally see without problems. It’s a pain but I’m afraid you need to switch servers depending on where the site is based – the most essential to have are firstly your home country and then probably fast UK IP Address, US and a good European server in somewhere like France or Germany – here’s one for example, you can find on Youtube.

So if you want to say goodbye to all these Video Not Available messages invest in a ninja proxy service or hunt down some free ones online if you have time.

Yes it will, unfortunately on Youtube it’s sometimes difficult to see which country the video is locked for. It’s best to try something like a US or UK server first then see if the video plays. Sometimes there’ll be a note in the description specifying which country’s will work especially on commercial videos.